My love poems are about drugs
My drug poems are about love
And I never write about cats

She mulls over
a void dance tactic
Before proclaiming
Me damaged and telling me
You need to meet a nice girl
And stop with all these
Pornographic sycophants
I insist I'm not sure
The nice ones would deal with
The cacophonous buzz saw
Roar of my thoughts
And she says
What about me?
Write me a poem like you do
For all the other girls
and then I'll straddle you
And make the pain go away
And I reply
Okay, but I am not paying full price
for this session.

You can be my pinewood forest
and I'll wander through your mists
ducking through
your hollowed out trees anytime
I'm your huckleberry
bushes growing
under your treetops
and you can eat my berries anytime
Recall that
huckleberries only grow wild
and so do I.

I locked my heart fathoms beneath the waves
assuming that it would be lost to time and pressure
Bewildered, I could not fathom how you carried it to shore
but was elated at the thought that someone found worth in what I had mournfully discarded
For some time since then we sailed on a ramshackle ship
my heart still shackled and guarded
but on occasion I agreed to let it out
as it bled abundantly, thinking this sacrifice
could keep our sails on course
Of course this was only a cathartic ritual.
I often wonder how long the leviathan followed you
How long you keep it under your control as it stalked below?
When did it start to rebel?
When did you realize you were not its master?
When did it realize?
The attacks came slowly, as if it was testing our reaction
Gradually ramping up in intensity and intimidation
The first time it threw me overboard
I swore I'd never set sail again
and now I struggle to count how many times
I've plunged into the depths
We washed ashore
We rebuilt
but it became painfully apparent this beast would not relent.
At times I was not convinced this prowling menace is after you at all,
other times I think its end goal is to devour us both
The only conclusion I could be sure of
is that I could no longer risk the open seas.
In an act of desperation I've stolen back my heart and fled to the desert.
I contemplated not telling you
but just as this tentacled monstrosity does not seem able to leave you, so it is with me
Should you find your way to this desolate and desperate refuge I've chosen,  I will welcome you with open arms
and pray that the creature could not follow where the waters do not flow.

I staggered into our front door this morning
and I can't find the broken home
I feel like we have
because you take good care of the place
while I can't manage to take care of myself.
Dragging myself through the kitchen I
tip my king over in the chess
game we were playing
I know you're just learning the game
but I'm sure you know that means I forfeit.
I can feel the warm alcohol tinge to my
sweat this morning
the soft metallic taste invoking more memories
than I want to admit
I struggle to take in the
glimmer of dust floating through
seeping in light
everything else with its soft haze around it.
I kind of thought everything would fall into place
for us this year
but until death do us part seems like a sick joke
with how much we've struggled
to make it through the first week.
I walk into the bathroom and remove my ring
I always wanted that groove in my
finger from a ring settling in
getting comfortable and making itself
a home
But I've never managed to make myself
someone you can live with.
I had hoped we could rest upon each others bones
when they got too old to hold us on their own.
I drop into our bed and my head swims
will dull ache and deep remorse
as the future we planned blots itself out
another victim of broken and fermented promises.

The decay
you've wrought
with your doubled up beating
and distortion assaults
gives me no choice but
to fixate on new sonic romances
and I'm in love
with the way she cradles me
in that sedated groove
and the caress
of those faint record scratches
I need to
get through new time signatures
as I grow older
and apart from you

I wear a suit and tie all day
slave to a clock
come home tired and irritable
while the lion just does whatever it wants
and has the entire Serengeti to roam
picking off Wildebeests until it is satisfied
but it can't use a computer
or a microwave
and it doesn't have an air conditioner
but then all these things
are in my little cage
I'm not sure who has the better life
But I bet the lion would think
cheeseburgers and french fries
on value menus wherever we roam
are pretty awesome
I'm sure we would be good friends

I will
never
forgive myself
for forsaking you
little howling
wolf girl
with madness
in her eyes
and anger in
her voice
and a face
carved by the gentle
hands of nighttime stars

Little Scarlet Mouse Girl
and I
had very little cash
left from pay day
in my days as a
projectionist at the
cheap theatres
and her time at
a head shop
that didn't keep very good books
But it was enough to
buy a few cheeseburgers
before my shift
on Christmas morning
and Little Scarlet Mouse Girl
says muffled through
a huge bite
"Jack in the Box burgers
taste like ****"
and quickly adds
"Not that I would know".
She dropped me off and kissed me
as the snow flurries gathered around
our feet
and I had thought for sure
at that moment
this was the person I would spend my life
curled around
Regardless of the drugs
her tongue was acquainted with

In time and heat sand burns to glass
the glass cradles more sand
The sand keeps time morosely
amidst the engulfing heat
and ponders
if in time
it will become glass

What is this life
of overwhelming
cognitive dissonance
denial
and outright hypocrisy
that comes with living
as a human being?
How is it that we
get so caught up
on agenda and ideology
when the very concept
of consciousness
and reality
is something we are
unable to fully articulate?
I have set myself apart
with thoughts forming murky
impressionist fluctuations
of ever spiraling brain chemistry
to where sometimes
existence
feels all at once
like an absurd joke
and a sacred and mysterious gift.
So many people seem so certain
as if they are pointed in the exact direction
they should be
Waving flags
and preaching their truths
and killing in the name
of a thousand other fictions.
In comparison to them
I am so lost
and defeated by the vastness of it all
And right now
the only thing
I know
I'm sure about
is you.

You know
I was thinking how much
I'd like to just leave it all behind
and let loose like a mad
rebel with plenty of caws
flitting through sunlight that creeps
through the trees
because anymore
I can't get behind another day of
constantly dragging on more
supposed last toxin riddles
while your hands become these frail metastatic
cooling tower fingers
I can already see them already shaking off
clinched jaw fuel droplets
onto cancerous rancid mass graves
and I don't want to imagine what's beyond that
Besides
lately I've been preoccupied
with the feel of timeworn ciphers etched
in my charcoal wings as I
descend on power lines joining
scorched throat jesters cackling murderously
at this scorched earth
See I want to get away from our plutonic friends
all they want is to binge on residual radiation
raising their safety glasses to their excesses
knowing their acceptable risk deformities await
with contaminated breath
Sure we've got a reputation of being devious
but I'd rather proudly flaunt tattered onyx feathers
than sit around with
decaying radioactive half lives surrounding
inactive decaying half lives abounding
We crows scavenge our meals indiscriminately
but we don't dare eat our young as you do

All their money will turn to dust
The shopping centre cannot hold
The television signal to noise ratio
borders on obscene
The light of their superstars
already dead when they hit
Their songs will fade
as the music boxes burn out
It all rusts
It all goes silent
It all burns off
Everything decays
Everything dies
But if I can hold on to you
in our unspoken covenant
on the edge of forever
perhaps we can defy the sweeping hands
of this mortal coil
and turn our backs on time

1.
You slipped out in the night
leaving only
your period piece illustrations
of lament configurations
and braided wyrm coils
burrowed and replicating
in hollows of sorrow

2.
The best I can do is
listless digging through
your scrapped dream junk gears
and pointed dagger crystals coalesced
all around contraband gifts
scattered throughout

3.
At this point I'd even settle for one more night
so our last moment isn't a
backlash conversion pressed
at the back of the neck
whispering
it's
all
over
now

In the murky clots of consciousness
between sleep and awakening
we clung to an icy overpass railing
spitting down on graffiti camouflaged
train cars as their charging rickety
boom carried our uncontrollable laughter
toward destinations unknown
Our spirited tenacity was matched only by
turbulent winds whipping us into submission
Forcing us to brace ourselves to avoid getting
swept away
You tumbled backward off the slick rounded bars
of the overpass rail
and bit your lip so hard
I thought you would need stitches
but you kept on smiling as the blood plummeted
dripping all over the tracks in a sanguinary frost
Feeling arrogant and invincible
like two avante guarde dog soldiers
we marched past our old urban battlefields and
grimy fast food cattle fields
closed in on a ramshackle bar
and drowned our taboos and inhibitions in
foam drenched pitchers until we closed out that
ramshackle bar
We gleefully stumbled
wearing hazy street light halos
back to the
duplexed squalor of my doorstep
Sloppy kisses stained with the scent of
cheap beer completed the night
as we tore into each other and
made love on that ratty creaking mattress in the front
room
All I had at the time to rest on
was that ***** old bed
and you
until several months later
when they confined you to
pristine hospital beds instead
Intravenous deceptions and false hope blood tests followed
but even with all the motions of our modern medical drama
we couldn't avoid you getting slowly swept away
I regret never having the strength or honesty to visit you
just as I regret never telling anyone about you and I
I go hang on that overpass railing sometimes
remembering the knock-down-drag-out-reckless perfection
of that night
knowing that my agonizing love for you should
have been something I proudly proclaimed to the world
Now the trains carry away my atrocious wails
as the weight of my shame
nearly pulls me onto the tracks
and spills my insides in sacrificial testament
to all we've lost

She was gorgeous misery framed
in makeshift bandage corsets
cinched with fall from grace
sutured lace to save face
Her battered life rife with strife
covered in the mock elegance of
a broken wing dress as
the frenzies
in her enigmatic
mascara trail of tears glare
soften slow burn devotions  
hastening their hopeless necromantic
insurrection

He was a fatal attractive
midnight black feathered wraith
Modeling trouble need scar heart genes
and a bleedwork tainted warshirt
earned by tethering himself to a mistake on
countless battlefields
his enemies' rancorous fear resonates
in a crippled ripple
across stillbirth waters
With his outspoken outrage accented
by photographic violence
knowledge of immoral history charm and
disguised threat lodge wisdom
luring her into
their surprised allegory demise

In the here and now we find
uncaring torture chamber musicians
singing in the black ground
as these two scar-crossed lovers entangle  
in a shotgun wedding
and machine gun funeral
Knowing from the start
it would always be
the two of them
together as one
against the old world

She bleeds ‘all tragic steam work blasted mists
‘All hobbled clamped free fall for ‘all seasonal depression slump
She’s ‘all death knell cramp urgency and held back suffering kneeling
on kitchen floors ‘all like boarding school broomsticks lessons
with ‘all that theoretical **** the ***** save the man type
schlock shock rhetoric shtick
so ‘all I’ll be is her savage heretic wagon burner page-turner
on the hot coal back burner ‘all boarded up sealed shut in the walls
until she calls
Expecting me to be 'all combat ready
‘all back with a vengeance
while her thrift store hazard suit groups and droops
‘all over my haphazard dream sliced hang nailed hangover hands
hiding ‘all derelict style while between the sheets confessional
gets voided by social media air raid sirens
bringing me ‘all too close to rocks and crystals
and who ‘all needs another pathetic apathetic
junk punk when
‘all and ‘all
I'd rather die for you
because
I just can't live with myself

At first glance
the fight or flight flash trash light of the strip
appears to be a breathtaking rapid burst
of coming distractions
But after a few hours slinking and pulsating
with the grid pulling at your heartstrings-
Trudging through one closed door
where another creaks open
I realize it's really a slow burn disaster
coaxing me backsliding to where I belong
That is to say
that the past few years have been borrowed time
with little to no interest
All I've been doing is settling my accounts
and lack of accountability
Fulfilling obligations
closing out friendships and lost loves
with the efficient sorrow
one usually only sees on
the last leg of death row
Two approaches prominent in my desire for absolution-
Slamming cheap shots and begging for changed minds
depending on how much I wanted or took from you
in the first place
I am selfish
and I did hurt you
and I am even more selfish for trying to get you
to forgive me so I can check out and leave a mess
for you to clean up
But I am only here on someone else's dime
and all I have left to do is settle my accounts.

With our colonize wide open
we see that these
are not standard issues
Their mortifier brigades stomp
in death march madness
And we while cannot avoid the
genocide ways glances
of iron eyed code stalkers
Our very lives
stand as evidence
that we have endured

She often told me
she hurt
just below the surface
of her skin

I was so young

I thought that might mean

she had the fangs of a wolf
growing in her hands

I always wondered
when I held her
late at night
while the

winds howled outside

if it was actually
them
calling her home

and
she would bare those fangs
to tear my

heart to shreds

In dreary codeine inspired nights
Where I have somehow
Wandered back into your bed
We forget who we are
Lose ourselves in
those lucid slipstreams
I know where we stand
And I never want to come down

Her lips thrum
like reverb droplets
as I steal
trembling kisses
before the mad dash
out the door
into sun brushed
ruin

Love
conquers all
and
conquerors
destroy everything
in their path

She was always concealed
in the graceful mystery
of the way that she carried herself
Seldom found conventionally attractive
but ultimately possessing the unrivaled beauty
one only realizes
when dreams of a one way hurt
come crashing into their reality
and scatter that
subtle something about her
that they will never get back

A sunburst flash
Chopped up ******* down
with blistered reluctant pull
and the choke of dry dusty pills
A floodgate rush
Terror campaigns
Denial rampant
Plagues...
...on all houses involved.

I've got prose
in different area codes

We dissected his synapses
sent him subconsciously
seeking theorized sources
of the substance
Thanksgiving is coming
and I'm stuck mute on my new path
If he comes bearing gifts
can I say anything
through the slow death mask
and scramble suit deceptions
that will make him understand
the murky depth of my regret?

Changing sliced frames-phantasmic shapes
until all out of focus
No where is home
if we don't even know where we stand
Sliding a long treachery faster than
light intoxication and
slinking across the thin black line
Entire live spans and plans changed in the space
between a breath and a lie
Thresh hold reached intense beating
from forgotten spoil change
You do know that if you let me take the wheel
I'll drive us both crazy?
Brace yourself for jump
it will only work if we fall together
Counting down five-four-three-to-nothingness
End of line end of line end of time
Stop waiting stop planning stop delaying
The future never comes so
can we start again?
Delete
delete
repeat

My fingertips sweep across these subtle indentations
Tracing her serial number
A traumatic and numbing truth
copy written and branded on a tiny scar
just below her microscopic transistor
voice box
The shallow intake of oxygen into
recycled plastic lungs recycling air
either for realism or function
felt just as alluring
when they whispered into my ear
Her hardwired ducts always produced
tears that hurt just as much
even if it was programmable and on command
Losing the warm caress of her polymer skin
was just as painful
even though underneath was only cellular service
and not cellular growth
I swore to my friends that she wasn't like
any other I've ever loved
but as I push the lifeless shell of this
all too perfect woman into the muck caked
dumpster
I think to myself
Maybe I would have had better luck with
a name brand

I know you
needed someone
who is willing
****** flowers for you
and present them
with thorns all removed
but
here in the shadows
of the gnarled bramble
I'm still wild and unchecked
as I will never cease to be

Time ran its lecherous fingers
across our youngest son
with his oldest soul
Cruelly pried open weak spots
and stained our walls
with water damage tears
like misunderstood plague
that gloats just the same with
death knell freedom bell declarations
as we are herded
like cattle
and they ran their sacred waters
over my head but I found
I don't much subscribe to
forceful lead pipe
confessionals
and it's not that we want you off the land
we just want you to stop murdering it
with this run on death sentence
see I try to understand but
I struggle to be loyal when I saw what
you did to my brothers
and at this point all I ask
is
please
let my children
live.

Just as the shadows folded
themselves into the hills
for the night
and the sun dropped its
enveloping glint into
the corner of the looking glass

I drove slowly past your suicide

I could imagine the
scene as if I was there
You were pitifully slumped
over the dashboard
the telltale spray of
sacrificial lamb's blood
across the back window
confirmed
you sold your mind
in a shotgun barrage sale
The passenger door hung opened
as if ominously
inviting all lost souls
to join you
Birds circled
but did not dare
descend

I don't know why you
wanted to be buried
so far from home
maybe you knew
that we would
simultaneously haunt
each other
with a lost love
that never fully made sense

I've been a ghost town since
your unsettling
impersonal
departure
The drive down was
haunting...waking nightmares
and dulling pain
with whatever I could get
my hands on
Mumbled ranting fever dreams
of not so sacred cows
skipped over songs
and roadside immolation

Now I'm here

and they're casting lots
for your belongings
Without explanation
my mind drifts
to the moment we come into the world
screaming as the air hits your lungs
for the first time
they put you in your first tiny
pair of clothes
and you are so loved in those first
days
We blink into existence
Dance in its splendor
Sulk in its darkness
then we are gone just as fast
as they lower us into the ground
no longer screaming
wrapped in our last set of clothes
I turn away from
their morbid possession dissection
because you already gave me
so much
the weight is heavy enough
I look to my brother
without saying a word
and he knows it's time for the
long journey home

What I miss most
about you
is those
hidden powder keg stand
salmon net blood stained
scaffold pirate rigging
crumpled roof
dense smoke cloud cabin
dangerous flirtatious biker bar taunting
staggering pool playing
yellow and black liquid haze
full on sensory assault
adventures
we both knew
would never last

This bitter endgame theory
is the remnant of us
tightly clutched in a loose collection
of dulled hidden blades I kept in
empty sugar pill bottles
for moments such as these
My shallow breath slowing
showing
nothing left but hesitation marks manifesto readings
to stave off never lasting mob stompers
losing control of thought criminal empires
All is lost with wounds swabbed in hopes of growing cultures
not inundated by murderland vultures
cackling that doomsday clock apocalyptic-talk
as they pick apart failed crop circles
The past is in the past but remains so tense
as you stand revolted by wretched plans
while wrenching cold calculating razors from my hand
because being allowed to touch seemed so unattainable to me
in the first place
and now that you're gone
I
am
so
scar struck.

Light plays throughout the room
where the blinds were pulled off the rails
Slams and screams in the units
surrounding
grant a brief illusion
that I am not sealed up
Down to half a twelve ounce aluminum can
I can exchange for change tomorrow
to do it all again
For now though
Not enough to black out
Silently watching the light play
until the sun recedes
will have to do

I was overthrown
by your hand
pressed against
the membrane
and absorbed
in capillary shades
of betrayal
Generations
smothered in cradles
prematurely suffocated
for anthems
that existed
in languages
you never felt compelled
to understand
And now
that you cry for
the fragile balance
of the cycle
The people in the stars
still loom
The people in the stars
still live
And soon you will remember
how it feels to tremble
and answer for your crimes

My
life blooms
in stunted fractures
stuck in
a lightless
concrete ghetto
of shade fingered
catatonia

Is there an order?
In there an approximation of pi
circling our first awkward flirtations?
Does a dragon curve lurk hidden as I
caress the curvature of your spine?
Where does Euclidean geometry fit in to the
first time our lips met?
Does the Pythagorean theorem detail our most intimate
love making?
A quadratic formula for the shameful
discarding of punched in picture frames?
Is there a golden ratio that best expresses
hurried apologies and frantic entanglements
between our sheets?
I know for certain there was
a simple subtraction
on the day your tears added up everything
and finally said goodbye.
Some would say there is order in this
chaos disguised as order disguised as
chaos
Continually debating pattern recognition
or butterfly effects
But I’d like to think
We were more subtle than that

The flat desert terrain melts together
when you’ve been driving all night
sliding through twisted canyons filled with nothing
but rugged gray brush and ***** sand.
Even in complete darkness the desert air is still hot and dry
every breath harsh and dusty as it’s drawn deep into my lungs.

We round another of the endless corners on this highway
the engine of our rapidly aging vehicle shakes
as it soars along this empty stretch of nothing.
She sits quietly
almost comatose
blankly staring forward
with occasional slight smirks of morbid fascination
each time an insect smacks the windshield at
breakneck speeds.

She used to love hanging out of the top of sunroofs
letting the breeze flow past her body
dancing
my obscenely beautiful angel.

But we are long past that now.

When we met we were that couple
everyone knew
would be perfect for each other
but horrible for everyone around them
We did all the awful things most people our age did
but no one would have pictured us on this path
On occasion she shoots me hateful looks
silently accusing me
of ruining our perfect romance
with weakness when confronting the things
we've done.

At the edge of the horizon, a downtrodden motel
our destination
and tomorrow's headlines.
I don’t say anything to her
I just nod slightly
For me this is a matter of survival
because without her I could not survive.
Vague pulls of morality tell me this is wrong
but I remind myself my morality is reserved
only for her
Morality is for people that have everything
and I have only her.

We select our target by the cloudy glow
of a left on television that will muffle
any sound
The flimsy door splinters against the hardened sole
of my combat boot while
her hardened soul howls with tragic insanity,
and as my angel's wings grow black
the grisly screams are lost to the sweltering desert air.

Does she know
that she is silver strands of light
gently plucked from the sun
and manifested in human form?
Do those that would see her
captured know that you cannot bottle
sunlight?
Her intensity will burn those hands
before she can be contained.
Does she know that she has become my beacon?
Does she know that she is my warmth?
Does she know that her presence chases away
the darkness?
Does she know that I would not
capture that which
is meant to dance across water?
Across the sky?
I desire only
to hold her in my hands
for as long as she will let me.
Does she know that she is sunlight?

We are condemned to
pass by
in the smudged opacity
of bygone oil lamps
It is in these clandestine
exchanges -
Between pulsating nettle
stings in lightless anguish
just behind my eyes -
I steal treasured glimpses
of your timeless features
painted in
faded sepia tone depiction
of war torn Soldaderas

Lips carrying traces of shellshock
Eyes that speak
of barbed wire carved laceration
and coiled braids telling the story
of combat

As we sneak past the ruins
of failed uprisings
We defy this sorrow -
this separation
with a slow
sensual brush
of fingertips
across each others palms
A substitute for our
unrelenting passion
that must carry us through
until we meet again

I had forgotten
the sensation of
painted lines
adorning my face,
weaving tales
of secret and sacred things
that would otherwise remain
undocumented and guarded.
As I scrubbed
off those caked layers
of primal mystery
before leaving the riverbank,
I couldn't help
but wonder...
...If I never returned,
was I washing away
my only chance
at something authentic
in this life?

I've been looking over
my portfolio and considering
diversifying my assets
to feed this junk punk habit of mine.
Ono-Sendai is looking strong
after that Hosaka team up
But I've been told to stay away from
those weirdos at Tessier-Ashpool
and their vatgrown monstrosities -
They're all scary like dead TV grey skies.
Cyberdyne stock is rumored
to skyrocket after some microchip breakthrough
but I've just never trusted their promises -
No fate but what we make and I don't
know if I like what they're making.
Tyrell Corp is down after that
messy Nexus-6 affair -
Tears in rain and their CEO dead
Guess they should leave the synth
business to Hyperdyne instead.
(Hey...are they just a division of Cyberdyne?
I should investigate that one)
but then I've heard Hyperdyne has
some twitchy artificials of their own running
rampant through Weyland-Yutani.
Weyland-Yutani seems like a solid bet
after their merger
but I've heard they'll treat you like
an expendable crew -
Absent mother computers and derelict signals
abound.

**** it.
I'm going with Walmart.

There are years of
rusted crimson coating the rails
corroding the way we once traversed
and the secret walkway stones
only we could ever navigate
when the beaten path was
too crowded
have been smoothed bare
We anxiously stand apart
in this seemingly
final void of a thousand
chasms overgrown with
agonizing truths
Every bit of strength
devoted to fighting against
tumbling off the edges
As pain weighs on us with inevitability
falsely alleviated by tiny
brief
moments we disguise as stability
we scrape by
with scarce resources draining
We are
exhausted
and
hurt
and
unsure
Yet in this treacherous space
between us
that we fear falling
into
there is
An untamed look our
eyes
A tremble our
embrace
And a longing in our
hearts
that we cannot ignore
and I know
that our love can outweigh
all hurts

Seemingly random change greets me
as a phase shift just below all surfaces
In front of the face the world
Julia sets me apart
takes my hands
turns them to branches with
all my lines blurring
Planting new seed values
endlessly looping on one another
fractals endlessly transforming
infinite
and
beautiful
chaotic determination
I'm all mixed states and
dreams of you
Each flutter of your translucent wings
manifesting all new hurricanes
I cannot control
what haunts us next
I let go
With each iteration
I am free.

The woman I was supposed to
marry moved away long ago
And no matter how hard
I tried to follow the dust trails
I only ever came up short of breath
In the end of days
where it's always night
we spend time
in a broken down watering hole
on the edge of purgatory
and listen to muffled bomb blasts
bleeding on through to the other side
When she laughs she
stares up at the ceiling
and I can see traces of
repressed horror welling up in her eyes
I can tell she's thinking about
nitroglycerin sweat and splintered cells and scattered shells
before it all goes down
In the retro cartoon relapse nightmare
I've conjured for us to spend our time
The television flickers with the hissing reluctance
of reporters telling us to prepare for another
invasion
She finally speaks.
"You know there are no real sides right?
You know that back home there's just
dodging fire and not necessarily knowing
who it's from?"
She takes another drink
and tells me
"You could have come
for me, you know?
You didn't have to sit stateside
with endless excuses while the rest
of us had to be there on the blurred
front lines.
Still...I want to be with you now.
Here I am trying to look my best.
I like to wear
brightly colored ribbons
woven into my hair
and don't bother to cover
all the scars...because
that's who I am.
they can't take it back
and neither can I..."
She pauses to brush
tears from her face
and finishes with
"...and I think everyone
wants to look nice for the one
they love".

He is a published poet
And I'm eagerly hoping
I'm about to unlock the secret
To turning my expressions
of torment
Into something that will be held
In equally high esteem

Finally he says
"The one thing I can tell you
Is that no one
wants to read about
your emotions anymore"

"Okay" I flatly reply.

You lived in my old house.

You greeted us with
a warmth that
matched the touch
of soft simplicity
and the antique heirlooms
you so often
dressed your life in.
After the others left
and the wine bottles
fell empty to the floor
you smiled that lazy
knowing grin
that so often
told me I was loved.
Just as I pulled you into my arms
the world filled
with that telltale haze
when we are seeing
what is not real
and I felt
the impending sorrow
That so often comes on
As we begin to wake
from these longing mental trickeries.
You died in the fall
and every time the leaves
crumple and wither
I do the same
as we so often do
when a part of us leaves this world.

In my dreams
You still live in my old house.

Silas has locked himself away in a skyscraping hotel
perched atop a Vegas casino
Belongings scattered throughout
like passenger train derailments

He was a writer with a jack knife vision
Now he gathers dust next to a windowsill graveyard
crumpled up beside his follow up novel
sloppily sprawled out
unfocused unedited and unlikable

Unable to cope with fame stress addictions
the last of dwindling fortunes
afford the luxury of
having everything delivered
He hides from the maids
thus
his only face to face contact
with the outside world consists of
quick frightening glimpses -
inquiring half-faces through the door
chain

Developed this shuffling submissive
walk to keep from falling over
compensating for dizziness
from stolen prescriptions
he doesn't need
and shouldn't have
Drowning his sorrows with grandeur -
Eating nothing but eggs
Drinking like a fish
to chase runaway pills
A stuck throat refuge
lulling him to sleep

Silas  drifts away into a comatose fate
Left dreaming
Hoping someone wants to ****** him
in his sleep
and end
the dull roar

You said you would love me

until the end of the world

but I'm glad you stuck around after